The Four Feathers

strapped his field-glasses int

," Captain M

l move

Durrance's detachment of the Camel Corps moved down from the gloomy ridge of Khor Gwob, thirty-five miles southwest of S

aps all crumbled into a desolation of stones. Hardly a patch of grass or the ragged branches of a mimosa had broken the monotony of ruin. And after that arid jou

the rich foliage, and the shadows of the branches lay so distinct and motionless upon the ground that they might themselves have been branches strewn there on some past day by a storm. The only sounds that were audible were the sharp clank of weapons, the soft ceaseless padding of the camels' feet, and at times the whirr of a flight of pigeons disturbed by the approaching cavalcade. Yet there w

and the Khor Baraka. Here the Suakis built their summer-h

ied with his four hundred men,"

eir alertness. They rode rocking drowsily in their saddles and prayed for the evening and the silver shine of stars. For three hours the camels went mincing on wi

ort,"

quick-growing trees had so closely girt and encroached upon it to the rear and to the right and to the left, that the traveller came upon it unexpectedly, as Childe Roland upon the

regularity of a river bank, the soldiers unsaddled their camels and prepared their food. Durrance

o!" s

ping in his turn. The grey ashes of a wood fir

ly," said

unroofed corridors and rooms. Durrance turned the ashes over with his boot. The stump of a charred and

Durrance sat himself down upon the parapet of the wall above the glacis, while the pigeons wheeled and circled overhead, thinking of the long months during which Tewfik must daily have strained his eyes from this very spot towar

e coral reefs toward Suez. A week and our turn

k to it," s

hy

. I like t

ability. Sympathy had given him patience and the power to understand, so that during these three years of campaign he had left far quicker and far abler men behind him, in his knowledge of the sorely harassed trib

we know-every Englishman in Egypt, too, knows-that this can't be the end. I

ilence surrounding them. But Durrance's eyes turned at last from the amphitheatre of hills; they lost their abstraction, they became intently fixed upon the shrubbery beyond the glacis. He was no lon

ing about?" he aske

, and answered

hen I reach London. I will eat it alone, I think, quite alon

should still be wheeling in and out of one particular tree. Don't point to it,

pon the branches, spotting the foliage like a purple fruit.

said Durrance. "Take a dozen

an Arab with a roll of yellowish dammar wound about his waist, and armed with a flat-headed spear and a shield of hide, dashed from the shelter and raced out between the soldiers into the open plain. He ran for a few yards only. For Mather gave a sharp ord

e Kabbabish tribe named Abou Fatma, and friend

u hide?" as

my friends. But, my gentlema

, "You speak English," and

came withou

a few

d you lea

Khar

e best part of an hour. At the end of that time the Arab was seen to descend the glacis, cross t

s, and mounted to the usual groaning and snarling. The detachment moved northwestward from Sinkat, at an acute angle to its morning's march. It skirted the hills oppos

lled Mather

e was to take to Berber, whence the contents were to be telegraphed to Cairo. But Berber had just fallen when the messenger arrived there. He was seized upon and impr

questioned if it had

He escaped from Berber at night, thre

in the wall? It is curious. Pe

mark on his ankl

the hills on the northern side of the

-and it comes down the Nile to be buried in a mud wall in Berber. Yes, it's curious," and he turned his face to the west and the sinking sun. Even as he looked, the sun dipped behind the hills. The sky above his head darkened rapidly, to violet; in the west it fla

e," he said with a sort of passion. "Before Khartum had f

upied with the history of that honest, great, impracticable soldier, who, despised by officials and thwarted by intrigues, a man of few ties and m

m glittered the curve of the Great Bear. In a week he would sail for England; he lay awake, counting up the years since the packet had cast off from Dover pier, and he found that the tale of them was good. Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir, the rush down the Red Sea, Tokar, Tamai, Tamanieb-the crowded moments came vividly to his mind. He thrilled even now at t

a week," murmure

ck," said Durran

ou no f

re was

shall have three month

is friends by a visit to Donegal, or he might find them perhaps in London. He would ride once again in the Row. But in the end he would come back. For his friend was married, and to Ethne Eustace, and as

Durrance to one Captain Willoughby, who was acting for the time as deputy-governor. After he had come from the Palace he told his story again, but this time in the native bazaar. He told it in Arabic, and it happened that a Gree

the house again?

in the dust, not knowing that during his imprisonment the town of Berber

he two men talked secretly together. The Greek happened to be Harry Feversham whom Durrance was proposing to visit in Donegal. Ca